Doctor Death (27 page)

The door was closed and the windows covered by shutters. You could see tracks in the mud around the lodge, presumably from the men who had hunted and caught Emile Oblonski, but otherwise there was a feeling of abandonment about the place.

A split log served as a step to the veranda.

“Watch out,” said the Commissioner. “Some of the boards look as if they’ve rotted through.”

I stepped around a few of the worst places and pushed the door open.

The room was dim and smelled of damp and old ashes. There was a brick oven at one end, providing a crude source of heat and the facility to cook a simple meal, and a curtained-off sleeping alcove at the other. In front of the window facing the lake stood a small table with yet another wicker chair.

I had imagined it bigger. It was hard to picture Cecile Montaine in these surroundings, even though her room at the convent school had been even more spartan.

The Commissioner opened the shutters to let the light in.

In the alcove there were several gray blankets that seemed very similar to the ones at the convent. The bed frame was covered by a rough burlap-covered mattress, presumably filled with straw. A shelf above the fireplace held a couple of tin cans and a blue enamel coffeepot. On the table stood a water basin and a pitcher covered by a checkered dishtowel. There were also two books, which I immediately examined. One was an almanac, the other a Bible. Both had numerous notes in the margins, with small closely spaced letters that did not resemble Cecile’s loopy handwriting.

The Commissioner’s interest had been caught by a faded green dress carefully hung on an improvised hanger cut from a thick branch.

“We can probably assume that this belonged to Cecile Montaine,” he said.

“It is hard to imagine that it could have been anyone else’s,” I said. “Unless the good Monsieur Vabonne has a mistress with a passion for nature.”

The Commissioner offered a small, dry “Ha.”

“Unlikely,” he said. “I believe he is over eighty. And if this was a love nest, the décor would probably be somewhat less spartan. Two glasses, for example. Another chair on the veranda. Not to mention sheets.”

He took out a large white handkerchief and dabbed his neck and forehead.

“Do you think we can drink the lake water without contracting dysentery?” he said.

“Most likely,” I said. “There are probably greater health risks associated with the municipal water in Varbourg.”

I lifted the dishtowel. The water pitcher was almost full. I poured a glass for the Commissioner and took the porcelain cup myself. I, too, was thirsty after the hike, and the water tasted fresh and clean. Then I began my search. I lifted the mattress, looked in the tins, shook the Bible and the almanac to see if any loose pages were hidden among the printed pages.

“Dear Madeleine, what is it you expect to find?”

“Cecile Montaine kept a diary,” I said. “I found her brother burning it.”

“Then it can hardly be here,” said the Commissioner dryly.

“No. But if you had developed that habit—would you stop? If you were sitting in a cabin like this one, during a couple of freezing weeks in February, with no company other than a peculiar young man—who from what we have heard does not talk much—might you not feel the need to put down your feelings and thoughts?”

The Commissioner looked around the small room. It was as if he imagined for the first time what it was like to be Cecile and to be
here
, in the winter cold, alone with Oblonski.

“She would not have been able to spend much time out of doors,” he said. “And what happened to her shoes? She was barefoot when she was found.”

“If he took her boots, with the weather we had in February, that would be about as effective as chaining her to the wall. She would not get far.”

“Do you think that is what he did?”

“The thought is frightening,” I said. “And when she fell ill . . .”

“Yes. She would have been utterly helpless. Completely dependent on him.”

But though we searched high and low, we found neither boots nor diary, and traces of Cecile were on the whole depressingly scarce. Other than the dress, the only evidence were two blood-splotched handkerchiefs with the initials
CM
embroidered in satin stitches, and some bloodstains on the gray blankets.

I thought about the long trip home and felt a need to apologize to the Commissioner.

“I was so sure that we would find something,” I said.

“We did,” he said, and put the handkerchiefs in his pocket. Then he carefully folded the faded green dress and placed it on top of one of the blankets. He folded the two other blankets with the same care and then tied the corners of the first together into a travel bundle. “We can now tell her family a little more about what happened before she died. It all counts.”

I hoped Cecile’s father was still free from infection and wondered if I could use the handkerchiefs as an excuse to see him again. Probably not. But perhaps I could ask the Commissioner for a report.

“Can we take the Bible and the almanac with us?” I asked.

“Presumably they belong to Old Vabonne or possibly to Leblanc,” said the Commissioner.

“Yes. But I would like to have the time to look through them properly and see whether Cecile has written something after all.”

“Very well. I don’t think the owner will object.”

We both had another drink of water, and I dried the glass and
cup with the dishtowel before putting them back in their place. Then we closed the shutters and began the homeward trudge.

My feet and legs were sore and my throat covered with mosquito bites when we finally reached civilization, or at least the forest lane that led to civilization. I walked often and happily, but I was more used to the city’s short distances and smooth streets and sidewalks. I was definitely not some kind of female Doctor Livingstone.

“Wait here,” said the Commissioner, who must have seen my exhaustion. “I will go back to Vabonne’s farm and get the carriage. It shouldn’t take me more than half an hour. Here, you can sit on the blanket in the meantime.”

For once it was nice to be treated as a delicate feminine creature. I sat down gratefully and wished that we had thought to bring some kind of water bottle.

Here in the sun, the mosquitoes left me alone; they were still not as numerous as they would be later in the spring. When the Commissioner had disappeared down the lane, I unlaced my boots and took them off. I was quite convinced that I had acquired at least four blisters and considered removing my stockings as well, but refrained. I would have had to shimmy up my skirt and loosen the garter belts, and this was, after all, not the East African jungle. Someone might walk by.

While I waited, I studied the notes in the almanac. They were for the most part hunting observations—this and that kind of bird or animal spotted in such a place, at such a time, carefully registered on the relevant dates. Once in a while the observations were mixed with comments of a more personal kind: “J d’ A could not hit a barn door at three paces. But his cognac is good.” “AB boasts of his conquests. Unpleasant human being.” Apparently
these were character judgments Old Vabonne had made of various hunting friends. Most were very brief, but in one place there was a slightly longer note: “Lb’s dog is a devil. It attacked MP’s brown gelding and bit it so severely in the left hock that the tendons were damaged. Have forbidden him to bring it on hunts from now on. At first, he was furious and cursed me to my face, but that same evening he came over to apologize. The man is choleric but has a good heart. Has offered me a nice sum for the hunting rights, too. Considering it. Maybe next year? These old legs aren’t what they used to be, and he knows what he is doing. But will miss this place.”

My attention was abruptly sharpened. Lb had to be Leblanc, since I knew from Vabonne’s own groundskeeper that he
had
in fact taken over the hunt now.

Leblanc had a devil of a dog. A dog that attacked horses. Or at least he had had one when Vabonne had made his notes.

I quickly flipped through the rest of the almanac to see if there was any more about Lb. There was not. Only one carefully filled margin after another about snipes, pheasants, ducks, wild rabbits, and an abundance of other living creatures.

I picked up the Bible to see what kind of thoughts Old Vabonne had set down there. Here there were fewer comments, and they focused almost exclusively on the First Book of Moses, the Book of Job, and a few places in Revelation. “
Myriad
is God’s creation” it said next to the creation in Genesis with a neat line under “myriad.” And in Ecclesiastes, a section was underlined with the same ruler-straight precision: “
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
” A brief “So true!” was added in the margin. But either Vabonne had changed his mind or someone had felt the need to express
disagreement. A wild and clumsy hand had crossed out the first declaration and scrawled a denial—NO NO WILL NOT BELIEVE IT, in awkward capitals and with no punctuation.

Was it Cecile? It was hard to determine because the block letters and the obvious difficulty the writer had had in forming them blurred any personal characteristics. It had very little similarity to the handwriting I had seen in the burning diary, but if she was ill and desperate, it might be possible. Or could it be Emile Oblonski? He could both read and write and must have his own reasons to think about the natures of men and animals.

In Revelation, a single passage was marked, not with the precise and straight line I had assigned to Vabonne but with a much less tidy undulation: “
. . . and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
”

And again there was a note in the same clumsy block letters as the first. This time a sincere prayer: HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE HELP ME PREVAIL NOT SUCCUMB FILL MY MIND WITH WISDOM GIVE ME COURAGE.

Were those Cecile’s words? Or Emile’s? And what kind of beast was it that had to be conquered?

The last underlined passage I did not find until I noticed that someone had torn a page from the Good Book and concealed it between the dust jacket and the cover. A hidden message, I thought, and hoped to finally find something I could definitively say came from Cecile Montaine.

I unfolded the page with eager fingers, but it was not essentially different from the others. It was from Leviticus, and again it was the messy hand that had done the underlining: “
And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
” The word “death” was underlined twice and repeated in the margin: DEATH DEATH.

My brain was slower than my spine. The skin along my vertebral column contracted so that I would have raised my hackles if human beings had still been equipped with fur. And only afterward did rationality catch up with base reflexes.

Blood, feces, and wolf hair on Mother Filippa’s stomach and the inside of her thighs. And Sister Marie-Claire’s choppy and reluctant narration:

“It lay . . . someone had placed . . . You understand . . . as when a man and a woman . . . and I could not . . . could not let others
see
 . . .”

I suddenly knew as surely as if I had done it myself why Mother Filippa had been killed. This was the reason. The dead wolf between her legs was both punishment and accusation, like the sign they used to hang around the necks of people chained in the stocks, proclaiming their sin for all the world to see.

An unclean woman who had lain with animals and had to be put to death for it.

That was how the murderer had seen it.

My senses expanded, and all at once I perceived every rustling in the thicket, every gust of wind, the warmth from the sun against my skin, the chill in my stomach.

The murderer had written these words. And Cecile had been dead for more than a month when someone had tried to cleave Mother Filippa’s head and chest in two. Cecile was not the one who had written this. It could be the other of the cabin’s temporary inhabitants. It could be Emile. Or . . . it could perhaps also be the man who now had the official right to the cabin and the hunt there. Monsieur Leblanc, who had a dog that attacked horses.

Soft hoofbeats approached along the lane. The carriage rounded the curve by the stand of budding beech trees, and I saw the Commissioner’s robust and familiar form on the box.

I was glad to see him.